Microbial population analysis improves the evidential value of faecal traces in forensic investigations

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• 作者：Frederike C. A. Quaak ; Mei-Lan M. de Graaf…
• 关键词：Forensics ; Faeces ; Microbial community profiling ; Microarray
• 刊名：International Journal of Legal Medicine
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：January 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：131
• 期：1
• 页码：45-51
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Medicine
• 刊物主题：Forensic Medicine; Medical Law; Medicine/Public Health, general;
• 出版者：Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• ISSN：1437-1596
• 卷排序：131

文摘

The forensic science community has a growing interest in microbial population analysis, especially the microbial populations found inside and on the human body. Both their high abundance, microbes outnumber human cells by a factor 10, and their diversity, different sites of the human body harbour different microbial communities, make them an interesting tool for forensics. Faecal material is a type of trace evidence which can be found in a variety of criminal cases, but is often being ignored in forensic investigations. Deriving a human short tandem repeat (STR) profile from a faecal sample can be challenging. However, the microbial communities within faecal material can be of additional criminalistic value in linking a faecal trace to the possible donor. We present a microarray technique in which the faecal microbial community is used to differentiate between faecal samples and developed a decision model to predict the possible common origin of questioned samples. The results show that this technique may be a useful additional tool when no or only partial human STR profiles can be generated.